hand of a hanged man
Illustration depicting a ‘hand of glory’ from the Peti Albert, circa 1706. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, St. James and the Magician Hermogenes, detail, 1565. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image via The Met.
This is a hand of glory. There is allegedly just one of these in the Whitby Museum collection. It was discovered hanging over the door lintel of an old cottage in Danby. It’s not only one of the weirdest things I’ve happened upon, but it’s wildly complex to make and has the most weirdly specific payoff. Fortunately, courtesy of the Peti Albert, an 18th-century grimoire of folk magic, I’ve got the down low on the how-to.
Step one: take a hand from a still hanging corpse, of a hanged man – and if the guy committed a murder, it had to be the hand that actually did it – and you have to take it in the middle of the night, during a lunar eclipse. (Unsure if that last part was necessary or just ensured you wouldn’t be seen.) Then you have to dry it, pickle it, and as if the smell of dehydrating flesh wasn’t already bad enough, the pickling brine contains at least three different kinds of piss. Then there’s a bunch of steps in the middle about leaving it on the porch of a church, but they’re highly debated amongst scholars because no one can read old English.
Next, you could ball it into a fist, or you could fully commit to your heinous deed and leave the hand outstretched, before caking it in fat (from the corpse), fashioning wicks (of human hair) onto each fingertip, and low and behold, you’ve got yourself the weirdest boutique candle for only the price of, well, your guilty conscience. Lucky for you, this thing has its perks: carry it around and you can unlock literally any door. Light it and it’ll guide your path, but like, only you can see it. And when you find yourself trying to rob your neighbour of their goods and petty cash, this thing will render anyone in your path motionless. Oh and the only way to put it out is with milk.
Hand of Glory on display at The Whitby Museum, North Yorkshire, UK. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
